Bevan Lewis’s Reviews > The Long 19th Century: European History from 1789 to 1917 > Status Update

Lecture 12 - Napoleon III - An Evaluation "As distinct from domestic policies, even when well intentioned, his politics were often quixotic, insufficiently considered, events often got out of control and he didn't seem to learn from past mistakes ... his learning curve in foreign policy was truly pathetic".

Such a good course but very dense, could listen to each lecture multiple times. After thinking that the first half of the century had been dealt with rather rapidly (we moved on to a summary of the 1850-1871 period and the Crimean War Weiner has doubled back to consider France in the post Napoleon period.

Lecture 3 - great overview of the first period - the Age of Revolution. The importance of the French Revolution can't be understated, as well as Industrialisation. I will have to read Hobsbawm and C A Bayly's "The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914" sounds like compulsory reading also

Lecture 2 covers the "Old Regime". Professor Weiner emphasises the continuity of the post Renaissance age. He argues that on the eve of the French Revolution Europe was essentially a "transformed medieval society". Certainly this argument is strong when you consider the vast majority of the population - the peasantry - which would still have lived much as they did in Roman times. States had transformed to some extent

I'm listening to this course for a second time as part of my current preoccupation with the late 19th century and the lead up to World War 1. That said this takes me right back to 1789, one of those moments that can be argued as the 'beginning of modernity'. This will be a slow meandering listen as I intend to do quite a few of the recommended readings along the way.